CANADIAN SPORTS: Six games of puck, one of luck

Chris Kelly has seen some things, over the years. The Toronto native has played more than 900 NHL games, regular season and playoffs; he has one Stanley Cup, with Boston in 2011. And on the morning of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final this year – a 3-2 Pittsburg win in double overtime- he wasn’t sure he’d be in the lineup; he hadn’t played much in these playoffs at age 36, in this sport he thinks is more densely packed and unpredictable than ever before.

“Yeah, it’s even more than it has been in the past,” said Kelly, the morning before his Ottawa Senators played the Pittsburgh Penguins. “When they put the salary cap into place, the first year the old teams were trying to (keep) their teams together and players were still in place, and every year it got closer and closer. Now it’s more difficult to make the playoffs, let alone survive and continue to keep playing.”

“It’s fractions. It’s incredible. Looking back and thinking about the Game 7s I’ve played in, three of them went into overtime. How close can you get? It comes down to bounces. It’s a coin flip. Game 7s are coin flips. I hope the fans enjoy it, because it makes life stressful on us.”

Players don’t usually admit the game rattles the nerves, but Kelly has always been an honest soul. He played three Game 7s in the 2011 Cup run, and another the Bruins lost in overtime in 2012, and one more in 2013 — the Toronto game, if you remember that. All but the Cup final win over Vancouver were one-goal games. This season, there have already been 26 overtime playoff games, and Kelly has arrived at a place that could best be described as hockey Zen: hope for luck, but don’t expect it.

“You hope, but it’s a bounce,” said Kelly, who scored an overtime winner in Game 1 against Washington in 2012. “I remember when we played Tampa in ’11 in the conference final, and it was 0-0 until about six minutes left. No penalties. And I thought we played extremely well. And there was one time where (Martin) St. Louis had the puck and he shot it and it went off our defenceman’s skate and just went wide, and I was thinking, I hope we don’t lose this by a bad bounce, and I’m sure they’re thinking the same way.”

“I think if you look back, I think it was just a slight mistake that we were able to capitalize and score the winner. (Steven Stamkos tripped) on nothing. A 60-goal scorer does that 1,000 times and he never falls down and he’s always in the right place, and . . . it’s luck. I hate to say that. But it’s a little bit of luck. You need luck on your side. If you ask every team that’s won, they had it.”

Kelly says the same about the Leafs’ Game 7: “Play that game 100 times, 99 times you lose.” But Game 7s are irrevocable. Whatever happens, happens. No going back. It’s what makes them cruel, and great. Too often we write songs about the victors and we cast the losers out, and it was the result of some tiny burst of unknowable physics. Hockey.

“And you sign up for that,” Kelly said. “You know. But you have a great year and you don’t get the result you’re looking for and ultimately you feel disappointed and somewhat defeated. But when you have time to look back on the season, there are so many positives that can come out from a season, and I think that’s what you try to do if you don’t get the result you’re looking for.”

“I think you can live with just bad luck. I think the worst thing you can have is regret. Not feeling like you pushed hard enough, or you left a little bit out there. I think that’s something that — when you’re finished and done and you look back on your career, you know, ‘I was so close, I really wish I could have given a little bit extra,’ and you have that regret — I think that stays with you. Whereas bad luck, you can live with.”

It sounds easy, right? Sports is supposed to be a meritocracy, but in hockey eventually players surrender one part of that idea. The distinction becomes something different: process, as much as results. You earn your bounces, or at least you tell yourself that. Before Game 6, Kelly spoke to the Senators, who were facing elimination, and urged a simple thing: Be here, now.

“It’s funny — I had this conversation with one of the reporters earlier in the year, but everyone thinks that we have these movie speeches, where somebody gets up,” Kelly said. “That never happens. I watch the movies and go, that’s a good speech. I think it was important just to let the guys know, stay in the moment. It’s so easy to look ahead to the future or look to the past, but . . . the future doesn’t happen unless you stay in the moment. And I just tried to explain that to them, and that’s it.

On the morning on Game 7, Chris Kelly was hanging on at the end of a fine career, waiting for one more chance, possessed of an earned hockey wisdom. You give everything you have to earn the right to get lucky. Or not.